Red States Sure Have a Lot of "Takers"

This, my friends, is called cognitive dissonance.

Ah, makers vs. takers.  Since we apparently didn't get enough of this during the election, conservative arguments about the government dividing us into a nation of job-creating, awe-inspiring "makers" and lazy, dependent "takers" persist.  It's at the core of their push to slash social safety net programs - just ask Paul Ryan, still writin' them budgets.  It's also the source of one of the biggest logical missteps in their increasingly broken ideology - they either don't care or don't understand that some of the biggest "takers" come from their base and represent the parts of the country that are supposedly full of hard-workin', free-enterprisin', do-good Americans.  Ah, but when they reap the benefits of government largesse, it doesn't count.  They deserve it, you see.

First, an anecdote before we get to the hard numbers.  I know someone who's a pretty hardcore conservative.  He's always filling up his Facebook feed with stupid memes and Fox News talking points.  He loves to complain about the ills of government social programs and how the government punishes hard workers to reward the lazy.  But here's the thing.  He's ex-military.  Because of his service, he went to school for free on the Post-9/11 GI Bill.  He gets free health care for life.  He gets a housing stipend.  By his definition, he lives in his own socialist country (a rather nice one at that).  Now, I'm not saying he and other military members don't deserve these benefits.  But not everyone can be in the military.  They'd laugh me out of the recruiting office.  And it's really easy to complain about "takers" when you'll never have to worry about the cost of health care or make a student loan payment.  He advises that the way out of poverty is not through social programs but through prayer.  Did he pray his way through college?  I'm sorry, but I will take actual, directed programs with the goals of not only helping individuals in need but advancing society as a whole.  The original GI Bill was a massive government investment in human capital that helped fuel the post-WWII economic boom.  Everyone benefited.  Sometimes, though, those not in the military are deserving of some assistance.

So where do all those sweet government Benjamins go?  First, let's remind ourselves of the 2012 electoral map, which has only changed slightly in the years since 2000.

 

This should be pretty familiar; by now we all know where the red and blue regions of the country are.  Now I want to show you three maps that show, in different ways, which parts of the country receive the most money and benefits from the federal government.  As I do this, keep in mind that the core tenet of Republican governing philosophy is that government is too big, spends too much money, and wastes it on excessive social programs that prop up people without initiative.  For many Republicans, this includes (in their current forms) Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and disability benefits.

This map shows how much money each state gets in federal benefits for each dollar that it pays in federal taxes.  In essence, it divides states into makers (states under $1.00 - net payers of taxes) and takers (states over $1.00 - net receivers of taxes).  Notice where the largest concentration of taker states is?  Yup, the South.  Core red country.  Texas pays in due to oil taxes.  To be sure, there are some blue taker states as well.  New Mexico is a big receiver due to large Native populations here.  But any argument about a correlation between government handouts and a dominance of liberal government is clearly false.  Look at all those Republican Senators across the South, advocating for more money for their states.  In fact, it's the other way around - states like Illinois, Ohio, and New York are subsidizing others.  If the Neo-Confederates followed through on their silly ideas to secede, they'd have to hope Texas were around to bail them out.

This map answers the question "Who is Romney's 47%?" in a way that might make conservatives queasy.  It ranks in order, from most to least, the percentage of each state's population that has no federal tax liability (i.e., the infamous 47%).  The only blue states in the top ten are New Mexico and Florida (which barely counts).  By comparison, seven of the bottom 10 are blue.  So when Romney said there were 47% of the people whom he couldn't win the votes of, he was largely talking about his southern conservative base.  Funny, they voted for him anyway.

In a way this last map is a subset of the first one, but conservatives have been complaining a lot about disability benefits lately so it's worthy of inclusion.  Not surprisingly, the highest concentration of those receiving these benefits is, again, in the South.  It's true that you can't prove, based on this map, that people receiving the benefits are voting Republican.  However, as I've noted, everyone benefits from these programs.  People receive income they otherwise wouldn't and pump that money into the economy.  Meanwhile, someone should really tell Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky to do something about all the freeloaders in his state.

My point with these maps isn't to belittle the South, but merely to point out that conservatives love to complain about the mythical moocher, when he actually lives in their backyard.  When Republicans support slashing social insurance programs, they are hurting themselves too.  But they manage to convince millions of poor and middle class voters to vote in politicians that will slash programs that the poor and middle class benefit the most from.  And when they reap the rewards of tax cuts for the wealthy (capital gains, inheritance) or corporate welfare programs in amounts that would feed a poor family for years, that's ok.  They deserve it because they're job creators.  Who cares if nobody else has any money to buy their products?  What could possibly go wrong?